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- Researchers published two new papers on the human Y chromosome.
- It's the final chromosome in the human genome that researchers hadn't fully sequenced.
- The new reference could help researchers better understand infertility and some types of cancer.
Decades ago, researchers referred to the human Y chromosome as a "functional wasteland," among other names.
A huge amount of its genome was unsequenced, and it was difficult to know how some of its protein-coding genes worked. But not anymore.
Two new papers, both published today in Nature, shed light on some of the Y chromosome's mysteries.